


To Keep The Light From Passing Through

by Wikiaddicted723



Series: A Slow Death Would Be Kinder [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Adults In Relationships Behaving Like Adults, Established Relationship, F/M, Light Dom/sub, Rope Bondage, Where 'Relationships' Means Whatever The Fuck They Want It To Mean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-22
Updated: 2016-11-22
Packaged: 2018-09-01 06:56:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8614108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wikiaddicted723/pseuds/Wikiaddicted723
Summary: “I’m glad,” he tells her, offering his arm. The moment’s tense, anticipation hanging overhead like the proverbial tip of the double-edged sword they’re not actually looking to escape. Natalia slides her hand into his elbow, playing at something old fashioned, smirking with it. She’s been shy all night—or at least as close to it as she gets. Bucky clears his throat. “So.”[A Negotiation].





	

“You want me to tie you up.”

“Yes.”

“You want me to fuck you while you’re tied up,”Bucky clarifies, voice flat as he can make it, the muted cartoon on television flickering blue over their features in the half-light of the room. His head rests in her lap, her hands in his hair and chest, under the collar of his shirt.

“Yes,” Natalia says again. He can hear her swallow reflexively. The hand carding through his hair drops off, moves away.

Bucky swings his legs over the edge of the couch and plants his feet on the rug, pushes up to sitting. He leans forward to rest elbows on knees. She’s not looking at him. She won’t look at him.

“Why?” Bucky asks.

It takes her so long to say anything back that Bucky’s half convinced this’ll be another one of those arguments that end in an awkwardly aborted night and weeks of radio silence. They’re rare, and infuriating, and he hates them more than anything else. Hates them because he knows the problem is trust, and what she can give of it, and that he can do fuck-all to help.

But she does answer. She says, “It scares me,” and for one surreal moment Bucky thinks the stabbing pain in his chest might actually be a heart attack. There’s very little Natalia hates more than being afraid. One of those things is admitting to it.

And that means…Jesus. He could kiss her. He could cry. For Natalia fear is the kind of nuisance that’s dealt with by cornering it in a room with no exits and tearing it limb from limb until nothing’s left. "And I'm what?" Bucky asks, though he thinks he knows the answer. “Your controlled environment?”

It’s trust. It’ll always be trust—either the gift of it or its lack. This is the former. This is Natalia folding his hand around the knife pressed to her throat and letting him decide whether to push or withdraw.

She turns to him, finally. Reaches out to trace the edge of his jaw. She runs her thumb over the curve of his lower lip and it gives. His mouth opens for her; Bucky pushes the wet tip of his tongue to the pad of her thumb. Natalia blinks very slowly, stays so still it can't be anything but deliberate. She says, “Exactly,” and drops her hand.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Motherfuck-shit-fuck. Okay, alright. A plan. Make a plan. Figure out available resources, establish a timeframe. Bucky licks his lips, wrings his hands. Wary of the answer, he asks, “Now?”

The corner of her mouth quirks up. She shifts in her seat, pushes her cold bare feet into his lap. “No,” she says, kneading his thighs and stretching, grabbing the throw pillow from its desultory spot below the coffee table and shoving it under her neck. “Just think about it.”

 

***

 

“Romanoff.”

“Hey.” James’ voice on the phone, quiet, a little rough, the way it gets when he smokes. She can picture it, him, leaning out on his fire escape, cold beer on the floor, phone pressed against his ear, cigarette backwards between index and thumb to keep the bright burning end out of sight, away from the wind. Like a soldier. Like an inmate.

“Hi.” They haven't really spoken since she…made her request. The microwave beeps. She reaches inside absentmindedly, pulls the steaming mug out, sets it down on the countertop, drops a teabag in and drowns it with a spoon. “Haven't heard from you in a while.”

He hums in acknowledgement. “Wilson said you were working,” he explains. “I didn't want to bother you.”

“How did you know I was done?” She wouldn't put it past him to have sneaked a tracker past her. She’s got one programmed into his phone. But he knows that, of course.

“FRIDAY and I have an arrangement.”

“Oh?” FRIDAY giving that kind of access means he must’ve asked Pepper. She’s the only one other than Tony with enough authority to override Natasha’s standing instructions, which begin and end at _say nothing to no one unless I specify otherwise_.

“How do you think I keep managing those flowers on your birthday?”

She’d wondered. She keeps meaning to ask. But. “You don't think that’s a little intrusive?”

James snorts. “Hypocrite.”

“Jerk,” Natasha throws back. “I’d like to remind you I have a key now. A key _you_ gave me.”

“Right. Because you always use it.” Natasha can practically hear him rolling his eyes. Then his voices softens. He says, “It only tells me whether you’re staying in the building.” Adds, almost as an afterthought, “I don't use it much.”

It makes her smile. “What did you need me for?”

“I’ve been doing some thinking,” he says. “About what you asked me to do.”

“Yeah?” She asks it instinctively, without thinking, and it comes out pathetically breathless, her grip on the countertop white-knuckled, bone-breaking.

“How does Saturday sound?” James asks. “We can get dinner first. Maybe try that Korean place Carter was talking about.”

 

***

 

Natalia’s hair is still short, barely past curling behind her ears, in that stage of growth where inches take months. It’s styled now, at least, better cut than the shorn mess he’d left it in with the rush of stitching her up. The natural shade of it’s bright, flashing gold and beaten copper in the late summer light. She’s dyed the curling ends bright teal to match her nail polish, though he supposes it was probably done the other way around—nail polish chosen to match the dye.

“Lila,” she’d explained, when he’d wound the curl she’d left out of the world’s smallest ponytail around his finger, and asked. Bucky’d laughed. That kid could persuade mountains to move with a pout. Potential for supervillainy: check—not that he’ll voice that thought any time soon, or at all.

Anyway, it makes her look like a hipster. A good disguise.

“That was nice,” Natalia says now, on the sidewalk, leaving the restaurant. She likes places like these. Little holes in the wall with barely any seating space, a layer of sticky grime on the floor from cheap spilled beer and the best food of whatever cuisine they advertise. Bucky thinks she’d’ve been a poor boy’s dream sometime around 1939.

“I’m glad,” he tells her, offering his arm. The moment’s tense, anticipation hanging overhead like the proverbial tip of the double-edged sword they’re not actually looking to escape. Natalia slides her hand into his elbow, playing at something old fashioned, smirking with it. She’s been shy all night—or at least as close to it as she gets. Bucky clears his throat. “So.”

“So.”

“My place?”

She looks away, heels clicking on the sidewalk with the shift of her weight. “I left the equipment in mine.”

Equipment. That’s a good word for it. For heavy duty handcuffs strapped to long chains. As good as any. “ _Yeah_ ,” Bucky says, rubbing the back of his neck. He’s not a blusher, but—well. “About that.”

__

 

“Silk?”

It’s the first thing she asks, standing at the edge of his bed, the ends of the shimmering ivory rope like silver dripping from her hands. Asks it with a lowered head and a raised eyebrow, looking at him through long, lush eyelashes black with mascara. Looking at him like a wolf stares at free meat; wanting it, but weary of the effortlessness of a meal without the kill.

Bucky shrugs. “The day a pair of handcuffs can hold you…”

He undoes his belt, slides it from its loops. Lets it drop, and pulls his shirt off. More for her to look at, though part of him will always doubt the appeal.

“I’m good with knots, too,” Natalia says, dropping the rope and sliding the hooks of her earrings off, setting them on the coffee table—all but the little speck of the silver star that’s become a permanent fixture over the hollow of her inner ear. She untucks the polka-dot shirt from her high-waisted skirt. Unbuttons it, then takes his hand. She slides it under the open halves of the fabric, over her collarbone, and turns her back to him. He obliges, pulls the shirt off.

“Not mine,” Bucky says, unexpectedly rough. He trails his fingertips over the lace pattern running the lower edge of a bra that barely covers anything, the outline of her nipples dark through the gauzy mint fabric. It hooks closed at the front. Bucky decides then and there, in a heady flash, that whoever figured out the wrapping matters deserves a kiss, maybe a pat on the back.

He’s not sure if it’s the caress that widens her smile, or if it’s just that he’s staring like a fucking teenager that’s never seen breasts in his life. Probably the latter. Natalia tilts her head up at him in that dangerous way of hers, the one where she blinks heavy and even and lets the lust she knows you feel sink in. “Is that a dare?” she asks, half-turning back so her shoulder’s pressed against his sternum. When did he move in that close?

Bucky knows, with what’s left of his rational mind, that she’s overcompensating. That this scares her. That the paraphernalia involved is as much a way of retaining some control as it is a gesture, the kind of implicit agreement that seeks to excise the need for words.

“Do you want it to be?” He asks, moving his hand down to the clasps and the long zipper on her skirt. Wants to die a little, when gravity does its work and confirms the matched set underneath.

Natalia shakes her head. “Not tonight,” she says, eyes intent on the rope again. “I think I’d pay to see you walk into a sex shop.” She looks like she’s imagining it, amusement clear in the drop of her voice, the twitch of her glossy, candy pink lips into the ghost of a smile.

“They were very helpful.” Bucky says. They’d certainly liked his questions. He leans into her, slides his right hand through her hair, shakes it loose all the way. She chases his fingers, practically purring at him. She steps out of the pool of her skirt, and sits, the mattress dipping beneath her.

“You want a drink?” Bucky asks.

Natalia unbuttons his pants, slides them down. She kisses the curve of his hip when he steps out and kicks them back. “I’d love one,” she answers, fingers tracing the ends of the stretch marks running down over the dip where his thigh meets his ass. She lets him go when he moves back. Before he crosses the threshold, she adds, “Bring the bottle with you.”

 _Bring the bottle with you_. He wonders… he wonders, but he still sets the bottle down with the rocks glass when he comes back. Still pours for her every time she asks. When she’s done, last dregs of the third finger of bourbon abandoned on the coffee table and staring at the setting sun outside, Bucky says, “We don't have to do this tonight.” And when she says nothing to that he adds, “We don’t have to do this, period.”

That makes her look back at him, still standing. Hold his eye. “I want to,” she says. It sounds certain, but it feels…removed, somehow. Impersonal.

She asked. She asked, and she said yes, and she’s still saying yes. Bucky reminds himself of that. “Alright,” Bucky sighs, tracing the proud curve of her cheek with the back of his hand. He gets a knuckle under her chin, nudges up. “You have a safeword?”

“Psychopomp,” she replies, popping the _‘p_ ’ at the end, eyes flashing, and God, he loves that cheeky fucking smile.

He loves that smile, so he kisses it bigger. Slow and deep and messy, just the way he knows she likes, leaning over her until she’s moved down to her elbows and he’s straddling her at the end of the mattress, left hand on the curve of her neck. She’s breathing heavier when he pulls back, chest heaving a little, and Bucky’s going to take that bra off in just a minute, Jesus fuck. Just a minute more.

 

***

 

James worships her. It’s the only word that fits the next hour, and if Natasha weren’t somewhere over well-fucked and slightly below some sort of tantric enlightenment she’d find it lacking. His is the kind of worship that’s mindful, that stops just shy of terrifying because half of it is words, and jokes, and laughter. His mouth on her is a prayer spilling on skin, his hands an offering, the wild rush of his pulse under her lips the promise of sacrifice.

She tries to cede control but he gives it back like foam on the tide, one heady moan at a time, one whispered _I love you_ that she can’t say back, short of stamping _return to sender_ on it with the hot brand of her mouth. They kiss. They kiss. They kiss. Lips greedy, lips swollen, lips raw. When he abandons her tongue he sets his to work, earlobe, jaw, throat.

Breasts, after he’s ensured a thorough job above. He nuzzles, maps the curve of each one with his breath, dropping a peck here, a peck there, until her nipples peak and pebble. Natasha arches when he sucks on them—or rather sucks on the one and kneads at the other—begging more, more, more without without words, like a miser instead of a god.

To her surprise, he doesn't kiss further. He stays, he suckles. Below, he sets his hands to work. He gives her cool metal to suck into warmth, to curl her tongue around, his voice in her ear _honey_ this, _darling_ that. He saves her name for last: Natalia, Natalia, Natalia. When she’s warmed them he trails the fingers down and slides them between her legs, from her mouth to her cunt. He curls them inside. She curls into him in echo, like paper turning to ash.

He knows her body now like the back of his hand, could navigate her deaf and blind. He takes his time. There’s a trick to it, a particular edge along the tips of his fingers, blunt but defined, like the flat beds of fingernails. He angles that edge over her clit on every slide, the pressure of unyielding metal pads inside her building momentum, tightening the coil of aching pleasure in her gut. Orgasm creeps in slow, a long drip of hot wax that burns and builds and pools to keep the heat in, like a pulse under the skin.

The world takes a minute to settle back into being and James takes advantage of it. He returns to her mouth, robs her of breath. He rolls over her, pins her down with his weight, spreads her legs, and all the while he asks for permission: _may I? Can I? Would you like_? Yes, yes, yes. Then the stretch of his cock filling her thick and heavy, the low moan it wrestles from the back of her throat. The shudder of his breath on her lips, the scratch of his chest hair across breasts sucked to aching. That look on his face, mouth open, eyebrows tight, eyes racing over her.

One of his hands disappears above her head, digs under the pillow. He kisses her to distract her from it and she lets him. Regrets that, when she hears the click of a button and the rumbling buzz that follows. He slides the vibrator between them, tight on her clit as he thrust sharp and deep, not bothering to pull out before pressing in. It’s like lightning, like a circuit closing, every nerve instantly alive. The sound that makes it out of her throat is a shout.

His back bleeds under her fingernails, turned all of a sudden into a war zone.

By the time they get to the ropes he’s all but fucked the fear out of her, drained it from her blood like poison, discarded it like so much waste.

__

 

“This should be uncomfortable at worst. Stop me if it hurts.” He says it in the kind of tone that brooks no argument, her arms up over her head as he twists the rope over her breasts and then under them, looping it securely against itself, using the tension born of twisting and pulling in opposite directions to keep it from tightening or loosening as she strains.

He follows the horizontal loops by sliding the loose rope underneath the crisscrossing pattern along her spine, and up into a diagonal that peaks at her shoulder, crossing down over her chest to slide under the rope between her breasts. Then he twists that flat diagonal around on the horizontal loop at the end of her sternum and repeats the pattern backwards over the opposite shoulder, until he’s got a vee of braided silk framing her throat. She realizes, as he ties the last knot between her shoulder blades, that it's a harness.

“Understood,” Natasha says, dropping her arms, everything loose, the world sharp around her. James kneels behind her, checking the tension of the rope, pulling all the knots tight but leaving space for his pinkie fingers between the rope and her skin. He brushes kisses up her neck, down the knobs of her spine.

“Okay?”

Natasha lets her head drop back onto his shoulder, swivel to face the crook of his neck. She scrapes her teeth over the tendon and muscle there, feels him shiver with it, punctuate it with a sharp exhale. His hands are sure on the ropes, on her body, a convincing facsimile of experience. She’d forgotten how fast he can learn intricate skills like this.

“Okay,” she says, her hands moving over his thighs, which bracket hers. He runs his hands down her shoulders, down over her arms until he’s holding them right above the elbow with only the whisper of pressure. James presses a kiss to her nose, makes her snort a little laugh.

“Bring your hands behind your back,” James says, letting go of her arms. When she does he bends then upward, knuckles to scapulae, but not fast, not hard, mindful of her shoulders. The tension burns just enough that she can relax into it. He ties both hands, individually, to the spine of the harness, thick loops of rope nearly halfway up her forearms. “How’s that?” James asks, his left hand on her hip, the right warm and pliable on the back of her neck, under the ends of her hair.

“Tight.”

“Too tight?”

Natasha shakes her head, wiggles her fingers. “Just right,” she says, leaning back just enough that she can pinch the little peak of his left nipple behind her back; there’s not a inch between her shoulder blades and the backs of her hands. Feels him twitch against the curve of her ass with the sting of it, so she does it again. James huffs a breath but presses into the touch. 

“I’m going to tie your legs next,” James announces, moving away from her on his knees and toppling her onto her back, onto her hands and arms, with a firm yank on the the back of the harness. The hand on her neck stabilizes her head as she falls.

Natasha tenses, everything locking up for a moment before she registers cool metal on the hollow of her stretched belly, vibranium knuckles brushing down the side of her ribcage, a tessellated palm spreading cool over the puckered scar on the crest of her hip. She blinks her head clear again. Thinks if she were normal, if she were just some woman, she’d blush at the display of her body, bound and bent into this taut arch just for him.

“Should’ve warned you,” James says, bending down to kiss her cheek, her mouth, her cheek again in a single line from side to side. Skips the apology, for once.

“S’alright,” Natasha says, skipping uncomfortably over her own breathlessness. It’s not about comfort. “I know it’s you.”

James smiles at that, a brilliant thing, crooked front teeth and bitten-red lips filling her vision. “Put your feet flat on the mattress,” he tells her. After a bit of wriggling around on her arms, she does just that. He grabs another length of rope and loops it a few inches below the knee, around calf and thigh. He repeats the loop a few times, and then cinches it tight with a knot. Then he slides the remainder of the rope between the top of the knot binding her and the back of her knee, and loops rope around rope to keep it from slipping off the natural taper of her knee. He does it all over again with the other leg, and then he does the same simple bind around each ankle, secures them to the backs of her thighs.

“Still okay?” James asks.

“Yes,” Natasha replies. Feels the need to whisper it.

“I’m pulling you back up,” James warns, and he does. Grabs her by the front of the harness and pulls, and oh, fuck. It makes her skin feel too small for her insides, oppressive; makes her breath short, her spine tingle. He needs to be touching her. He needs to be touching her and he knows it. The moment she’s sitting upright on her heels he presses himself against her back, upsets her balance by fitting her hips into his lap and lifting her toes off the mattress, left hand splayed at the base of her throat to keep her back to his chest as the right traces the crease of her thigh. He puts pressure on her collarbone, his thumb against her pulse. Then there’s the velvet line of his half-hard cock heavy on the small of her back. Natasha fucking _whimpers_.

“Feels good?” James asks, voice a heavy curl of smoke through the rush of blood in her ears, the rumble of oncoming storms. It gets her wet and he knows it, there’s a smirk branded into the word.

“You know it does,” Natasha says, nuzzling and sucking on the underside of his chin, where the skin bunches a little with the bend of his neck. Her chest heaves. The heel of his palm presses harder. All she thinks is _Yes, God, yes._

“Not really,” James says. Moves his hand up to curl around her neck, cool and smooth and loose. He could crush her in an instant. He won’t. He says, “I know I’d be happy to spend the weekend inside you. That’s what I know.”

There’s an idea. The cocoon of his body around her for days on end and him inside her, the steady touch, the filth falling from that gorgeous mouth and that same mouth on her. All of it over and over until coherence snaps and minutes, hours, days blur into each other. The complete opposite of sensory depravation but just as devastating, just as effective. Natasha swallows around the pressure of his hand. “Solid plan,” she says. Hates the way her voice wavers, the way it breaks.

“You think so?”

“Hmm. Could get started by touching me.”

“I’m touching you,” James says, right thumb drawing a broad circle on her hip to make his point. “You might want to be more specific than that.”

“ _Fuck me_ , you prick,” she bites out in Russian. In English, she breathes, “Pretty please,” and shudders with it, tingling fingers dinging into the planes of his chest, that layer of softness over compact muscle that he never had as a weapon. It’s something reclaimed, something unbearably, undeniably human, and oh, Natasha loves it.

James laughs, husky, low, hot down her spine. “In a minute, dear,” he breathes, lips moving on the shell of her ear.

__

 

Without his arms around her the only way to balance is to spread her legs wider, to push her hips forward off his lap and arch her back, and dig the bones of her knees into the mattress. To lean the tops of her shoulders against his chest and let the wall of his body hold her up. Natasha has no doubt this is by design.

The heat under too-tight skin, the breathlessness, it doesn’t go away. With him behind her the world narrows to the rise and fall of his chest, to the soft wispy hair there, his thighs underneath hers, his smell, the things he says, the sounds he makes. The long sweep of his eyelashes when she turns her head, his eyes half-closed, downcast, mesmerized by the way his handiwork frames her breasts.

The snap of a bottle cap opening, the little gasp and splutter of liquid being squeezed out, then slick knuckles brushing intermittently against the small of her back. James’ shallow breathing in her ear, his chin digging into the top of her shoulder, the twitch of his thighs against the insides of hers. The wet, delicious sound of James jerking himself back to a full erection as the first two fingers of his left hand finally, finally slide down the crease of her hip to dip inside her, easy as anything. He thrusts a little, curls them just enough to tease.

Then he takes them away and brings them up to his mouth, and hums like she’s the best thing he’s ever tasted, the best thing he’s ever put in his mouth. There’s a soft, protracted little _‘pop’_ when he pulls the fingers out. Her body betrays her; Natasha shudders, flushes red as her hair all the way to her chest. Has to bite her cheek until it bleeds just to keep from moaning.

“You taste ready,” James murmurs. “Are you?”

“Stop playing around,” she gasps.

“If you mean that, use your safe word.”

“No.” Natasha shakes her head. “No that’s not—”

“Then you don’t get to tell me what to do.” He does something to the knots along her back, pulls at one of them and all the others adjust to cinch the harness around her tighter. “You can ask me nicely.”

He’s going to make her beg. Wants her to beg. They always did, just to show her it was futile, just to stamp behavioural weakness out of her. It’s a test, it’s a test, it’s—no. No, it’s a gift. _A gift, Natalia, a gift_. This is James, only James, and you asked for this. Natasha breathes. Deep inhale, long exhale, again and again. Moisture slides out of the corners of her eyes, down her temples, tracks disappearing into the sweaty strands of hair sticking to the back of her neck. They’re not tears because she’s not crying. Because she doesn't cry. Because they took that, too.

Natasha breaks. “I’m ready,” she begs. “Please, I’m ready. Please.”

It feels like release.

James breathing hitches—a sharp, sudden intake—then rushes out. He kisses her cheek, the corner of her mouth, the shell of her ear, the curve of her neck. And that’s him, that’s James. No one else. “Okay, gorgeous,” he says. “Okay, alright. I’m yours,” he soothes, left hand pushing on her spine to make her kneel up, his chest rubbing luxurious over her hands. “All yours,” he promises. His knuckles brush against her swollen, aching cunt and then—and then he’s pushing inside her, inch by inch by inch. “That’s it,” he croons, once he’s seated inside her as far as he can go, hipbones digging into her buttocks. His voice is strangled, hips twitching with the effort of keeping still. “That’s it, honey, relax.”

It might the sweetest thing she’s ever heard. Her Soldier. There’s nothing more real than this: she asks and he bends over backwards to please her. Better yet, he’ll trust her to know how far he can go, how much she can take.

James winds his arms around her, brings the left down to press into her belly, hold her hips tight to his. The other cups her cheek, turns her to him. He catches her mouth in a hungry, biting thing of a kiss. Natasha returns it, messy and urgent as he begins to move, sets a punishing pace. She feels suspended, held together by the very things that threaten to pull her apart the way she wants to be pulled apart: the rush of his pulse, the puff of his breath, the snap of his hips and the wet slide of his cock with them, the sweat-slick seal of their bodies in every place they meet.

The palm on her cheek shifts, caresses, falls to her neck. That pressure again. That threat that isn't a threat because he’d put a bullet through his skull before he hurt her again. Natasha can’t look at him, can't stand the wonder, the glazed look of pure desire she’s memorized by now, knows like the back of her hand. He’s everywhere. He’s everything.

She closes her eyes, reduces input. It highlights everything she wants to feel. The rope on her skin, how big he is around her, the strength of his hands, the jolt that burns through her every time he pulls out and comes back. He’s kissing her everywhere he can reach and talking, babbling, _Natalia, Jesus fuck, Natalia_ , and _you feel good_ , and nonsense endearments that fall out of his mouth like a flood— _gorgeous, honey, sweetheart, heart’s own._

There’s an urgency, a desperation to it, like he’s the one bound and at her mercy, and that heat, that coil of pleasure in her gut, it builds and it tightens until all she can do is hold on and listen and dig her fingernails into his chest. Hopes they sting as much as the weight of his words, hopes they scratch red and raised so he remembers what he’s promised, what he’s given without asking about consequences first: that he’s _hers_.

Then he puts his fingers to her clit, purposeful and sensuous, hand smooth and firm where its opposite around her throat is shaking, gun calluses dragging on skin, and Natasha—Natasha’s gone. Shaking with it, arching back into him, mouth open on the salt of his throat, the world outside of him some empty, shapeless void that flickers out on his next thrust.

__

 

She comes to on her back, chest still heaving, trying to pump air into her lungs. The harness, or what's left of it, is somewhere beside her, cut to pieces. Her arms ache but her hands are unbound, rope slithering off the skin of thighs and calves as he pulls on the loops and loosens the knots. His fingers, the ones built of bone and sinew and nerves, shake and shake against her flesh.

Something’s not right.

“What—” Natasha starts, but her voice cracks. She takes a breath, works moisture back into her mouth as he sits up from where he’s bent over her legs. James looks at her. He’s still hard, still wet from her, flushed so darkly red it looks painful, and why would—she frowns. “You stopped?”

“Hey,” James says, moving back to her, voice wrecked, eyes wild. “There you are.” He frames her face in his hands, draws her into a kiss that she breaks. Won’t be distracted.

Natasha grabs his wrists, raises one of her aching, burning legs to wind around his hips and keep him there, keep him still. “James.”

Sees him huff out a breath and bite his lip. He shrugs, says, “Feels better when you can touch me back.” Says it like he’s admitting to some defect, confessing to some crime.

 _Oh, sweetheart_.

“So get back here,” Natasha says, pulling him down over her with her hands on his shoulder, hands in his hair. He drops his weight on his forearms for a second, then smooths the right down over her side, hitches her other leg around his hips. He rubs himself over her slick.

James presses his forehead to hers, asks, “Help me in?”

The only answer she can give is a smile and a kiss, and her hand around his cock guiding him when he pushes in. It draws a groan from them both. He stays just like that for a long time, seated all the way inside her, breathing, twitching, torturing himself.

“What’re you waiting for?” Natasha asks, kissing steadily up his jaw.

“Don’t want it to end,” James grumbles, mouth swollen, pupils blown and irises glazed, thoroughly debauched yet somehow holding onto the crumbling edge of sanity.

“We’ve got all weekend, remember?” Natasha says. She brushes the strands of hair sticking to his forehead away. When he chuckles but still refuses to move, she adds, “I want to see you come.”

“Oh, well,” James says, another one of those brilliant grins blooming on his lips, “since you asked so nicely.” Even here, even now (perhaps _especially_ here, _especially_ now) he makes her laugh.

It doesn’t take long. He’s too strung up to make it last, and she doesn’t want him to. She holds onto his shoulders, slides her hands over his back, grabs his ass, touches him everywhere. He comes with a low, drawn-out moan, his mouth on her shoulder, her fingernails digging into his back, into the raw, bloody tracks she left earlier—already healing, flesh knitting back together into something smooth and untouched. And that’s alright. She’ll make more later.

(He likes to be marked up, to have proof of her written in blood across his body. It hurts him, but this is what they are to each other. It’s worth it).

__

 

She’s hovering over that soft warm edge of sleep when James shifts beside her, says, in her ear, “Talk to me.”

Natasha doesn’t groan, doesn’t swat him. Instead, she stretches against him, pressing every inch of her body to his in one leisurely rub. She puts her thumb on the divot of his chin and pushes his head down to look her in the eye. In her gravest, most professional tone, Natasha says, “Much amaze. Such wow.”

James snorts, and rolls his eyes. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he says. Then, “Shower?” and a peck on her lips.

“Bath,” Natasha proposes instead, already sighing at the thought of scalding-hot water on her sore arms, sore legs, sore everything. She could nap there. James would hold her without question.

“Mmm, or I could keep kissing you.”

“No reason you can’t do that in the bath tub.”

“Agreed,” he says, after considering it a minute. James sits up, looks at her over his shoulder, gestures to his hips. “Hop on.”

That would be lovely. To not have to stand, not have to walk, let him do the work. And yet… Natasha shakes her head. “You go,” she says. “I’ll catch up.”

James nods, squeezes her ankle in reassurance. He knows. He understands. Sometimes she needs to pretend she’s still better off without anyone’s help, if only for a minute.“Hey,” James says. “I love you.”

That promise again: _yours. Yours whenever you want me. Yours for the taking_.

“I’m aware,” Natasha says. She smiles.

 

***

 

Later, Bucky asks, “Did it help?”

Natalia stirs on his chest. One of her hands comes up from his stomach to draw a wide half-circle, from sternum to clavicle to the cusp of his shoulder, then down to rub a spot of foam off the points of its star. Then further down and into the water. She grabs his hand, and he turns it for her, lets her push her fingers through the spaces between his. Quiet and easy, she says, “You did.”

“Good.” Bucky kisses her cheek, and leans back into the water.

 


End file.
